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I am studying for the CAP physics contest and came across this question:

"You are holding a bottle of pop in your hands on a bus. The bubbles in the pop are going straight up. Suddenly, the bus brakes hard to avoid a road hazard. How is the motion of the bubbles in the pop affected?"

I believed that since the bubbles are moving forward in their intertidal frame of reference, that they would move backwards in the drink. However, the answer is they would move towards the front of the bus. I was hoping someone would be able to help me understand why?

Qmechanic
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Tyler6
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1 Answers1

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Just think of what you experience when the bus breaks. You break your nose if you don't have your seatbelt on.

So for sure the bubbles would go forward, because they keep moving and the bus is the thing that "goes back". I would add that the bubbles keep going up, as the force in the vertical frame would be the same with or without the bus braking.

Gabriel Esp
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